| Universal Pictures | Release Date: November 22, 2024 | CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
50
Mixed:
12
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews
Nov 21, 2024
The plot is so rich and eventful, and the script so witty, that the movie doesn’t drag once the extended flashback starts. Moreover, every moment is eye candy. The screen bursts with whimsical costumes (by Paul Tazewell) and sets (Nathan Crowley is the production designer), and all of the important roles are impeccably cast.
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The PlaylistNov 19, 2024
Chu’s film is a triumph. An all-around delight. A colorful concoction sure to satiate fans, new and old alike. The film delivers both winking nods to the original stage production and finds novel ways of making its iconic numbers sing on screen, all while making the best use of live singing in recent memory.
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Nov 19, 2024
Fueled by exquisite performances from Tony winner Erivo (“The Color Purple”), as Elphaba, or the Wicked Witch of the West, and Grammy winner Grande as Glinda the Good Witch, “Wicked” is the best movie musical in years, representing a rare instance when performances, visuals and songs are of equally high quality.
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Nov 25, 2024
A brightly colored extravaganza, 'Wicked' is a monumental feat in the stage-to-screen lineage, with stunning sets, sharp choreography, and delightful musical numbers. Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande gracefully lead the film to great heights, and Jon M. Chu's tasteful direction raises hopes for 'Part Two.'
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Nov 22, 2024
The Daily BeastNov 19, 2024
Wicked is maximalist by every definition of the word, a whimsical, visual feast with top-to-bottom Movie Star performances that explode off the screen. But, under the delicate hand of maestro Jon M. Chu, it’s also grounded in a way that stirs you—brain, heart, courage, and all—in thrilling new ways that deepen and enrich the musical fans love.
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Nov 19, 2024
Wicked is a well-oiled machine in the hands of Jon M. Chu. This film adaptation epitomizes what modern movie musicals can and should be, embracing its source material while cleverly translating it to screen. Tear-jerking performances by Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo make the movie, playing to their individual strengths to bring to life the rapport between Glinda and Elphaba, who’ll go on to become the good and wicked witches of Wizard of Oz fame. If as many people love this film as much as I did, Wicked will undoubtedly immortalize the Grande and Erivo in movie musical history.
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Nov 19, 2024
Grande and Erivo give Stephen Schwartz’s songs — comedy numbers, introspective ballads, power anthems — effortless spontaneity. They help us buy into the intrinsic musical conceit that these characters are bursting into song to express feelings too large for spoken words, not just mouthing lyrics and trilling melodies that someone spent weeks cleaning up in a studio.
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Nov 19, 2024
Wicked: Part 1 is an incredible adaptation that captures the core of what fans adore about the stage musical while offering its own cinematic flourishes. Despite a few pacing hiccups, Jon M. Chu’s direction and the cast’s passionate performances create a magical journey worth experiencing.
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Nov 19, 2024
This film is as good as this project could ever hope to be, and it bodes well that Part Two will live up to everything that’s been set up here. When granted the chance to see them back-to-back, we just may, as the song goes, all be changed for the better. After this first act, it’s already safe to claim that Wicked is frickin’ Oz-some.
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Nov 19, 2024
Nov 19, 2024
It’s so doggedly faithful to the show, so emphatically orchestrated and so powered by Cynthia Erivo’s exceptional performance, that resistance to its 169 minutes of theme park magic becomes futile. This is a film that leaves nothing in the wings — except for an entire second act, and a sequel which has already been shot.
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Nov 19, 2024
Wicked succeeds because of some unreproducible, lightning in a bottle convergences—of director, stars, craftspeople, and high-status material. But Wicked also makes a broader case for patience and careful thought, for grand ambition honed over the course of many years. In order to defy gravity, gravity must first be understood.
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Nov 19, 2024
Wicked isn’t the best movie you’ll see this year, but it’s almost certainly the most movie. … There’s not a frame wasted, not a second of down time. It’s a little like having dessert for dinner, as well as for the appetizer and dessert again, too. And it’s fun, a good time at the movies.
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Nov 19, 2024
The story’s playful, subversive reinterpretation of 'The Wizard of Oz' as a work of propaganda, designed to obfuscate the true story of how political dissidents and minority groups are demonized by fascist con artists who trade in theatricality instead of competence, is fully developed and still (to our collective dismay) incredibly salient.
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Nov 20, 2024
If people breaking into song delights rather than flummoxes you, if elaborate dance numbers in village squares and fantastical nightclubs and emerald-hued cities make perfect sense to you, and especially if you already love “Wicked,” well then, you will likely love this film. If it feels like they made the best “Wicked” movie money could buy — well, it’s because they kinda did.
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Nov 19, 2024
All of Wicked’s best moments are still the ones from the stage. There are a lot of those great moments, though; certainly more than I expected. When Erivo’s Elphaba hits the soaring high notes in Wicked’s signature song, “Defying Gravity,” it’s enough to make you wish the wait for the second half of the film was only 15 minutes, instead of an entire year.
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Nov 19, 2024
Fans have been patiently waiting for the screen version of Wicked for decades now, and it’s safe to say that their faith will be rewarded. It’s also obvious that as much as this is still a tale of two witches, each blessed with equally beautiful voices, there’s a very clear standout here that’s lifting this occasionally leaden jazz-hands-extravaganza up to higher ground.
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IndieWireNov 19, 2024
The Film StageNov 20, 2024
It relegates its thematic strengths to the corner of ironically thoughtless family fun entertainment that seeks to please and assuage where other projects might investigate the theme and leave you with a sense of concern over the real-world parallels without sacrificing entertainment
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